


Lui pour Moi, Moi pour Lui dans la Vie

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: Atonement (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cecilia Tallis Is a Peeping Tom, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Outdoor Sex, Trans Male Character, bannedtogetherbingo2020, more content warnings in author's notes, trans Robbie Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: The truth is, I feel rather lightheaded and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.- Robbie Turner in Atonement (2007)On a very hot day in the summer of 1935, Cecilia Tallis goes for a swim to cool off - and runs into Robbie Turner, discovering one of his most well-guarded secrets.After that, things take a rather heated turn as their friendship and their fates are changed forever.
Relationships: Cecilia Tallis/Robbie Turner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Banned Banned Together Bingo 2020, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Lui pour Moi, Moi pour Lui dans la Vie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hllfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hllfire/gifts).



> This is my fill for the BannedTogetherBingo2020 prompt "Includes 'Penis'". 
> 
> Now, not many people will read this anyway, but if you are an AFAB trans person whose dysphoria is triggered by non-transitioned genitals, here are some content warnings for you (otherwise feel free to ignore):  
> \- Robbie hasn't had top surgery and is binding with bandages, which is a binding method that holds certain dangers. Please don't consider binding that way.  
> \- There will be explicit mentions of Robbie's untransitioned genitals and oral sex performed on them - if you know that this might cause you dysphoria, please back out of reading this now.  
> \- Robbie has implied dysphoria.  
> \- Cecilia uses a non-transphobic slur once. 
> 
> All my love to hllfire, the giftee, for their enabling and cheerleading :') Thank you, fam - without you, this probably would've been written, like, never.  
> Title from Édith Piaf's [La Vie en rose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0KvBnIvTFs).

It was a hot and sticky day. One of those days that makes you feel like you’re cast from wax, when every step you take feels like you’re walking through honey. The air shimmered searingly over the English countryside and over the Tallis House, and down by the pond, a lonely figure cut through the rippling water.

There was nothing to do, so Cecilia Tallis had rescued herself with a jump into the cool blue. Her white swimming cap had taken its leave after a few powerful strokes through the water, but there were worse things than wet hair. She simply kept on doing the crawl, once on her back, once on her belly. Lather, rinse, repeat. And then, when she felt her arms tire, she ceased her movements and just floated there, face turned up into the simmering gold of the sunlight.

Summer 1935. A plane droned by overhead – a harbinger of war, if her father was to be believed.

Cecilia exhaled with a puff, then held her breath as her own body weight pulled her underwater. She was far too young to remember the first War herself. The lives lost, the battles waged. And yet, she knew that when the time came, the young working-class men would be the first to vanish. Danny Hardman. The kitchen boys. The stable hands.

Robbie Turner.

Dismayed, she kicked her legs out and burst through the surface, breathing in the sweet, sweet scent of the pond and the flowers blooming all around. Of course, her brother Leon would be the last to go, if at all. He was from a wealthy family – and wealthy families rarely paid their war debt in blood.

Her spirit renewed, Cecilia fished the swimming cap bobbing up and down across from her from the water and threw it onto the nearby wooden pier. It landed with a soft splashing sound, but by then, she had already taken off in the opposite direction, seeking the shade of the trees as she penetrated further into the body of water, out of view of the jetty and its diving board.

There, among a cope of lush weeping willows, the boathouse stood, its colourfully painted wooden occupants rocking up and down on the gentle waves. With a few strokes of her legs, Cecilia was at the opposite side of the pond, her toes curling into the soft sleech and dead leaves on the underwater ground as she gently swayed to and fro, thinking.

These days, she was mostly left to her own devices. It was unlikely that anyone would see her dive into the deeper parts of the small lake, close to where the flood gates kept the water back, and rat on her. Bryony was off somewhere in the fruit grove playing knights and princesses with the twins, and Mother had taken Lola out to town. Leon wasn’t bound to return home for at least a few days still.

Cecilia was an experienced swimmer. She didn't need to be saved from drowning, and she certainly didn’t need someone to watch over her every movement in the water like she necessitated a chaperone.

Breathing in deeply, suddenly feeling like that small seven-year-old girl again who had run away for a whole afternoon one day to camp out in the woods, she leaned forward to plunge into the cool blue depth-

-and recoiled, her heart on her tongue.

Someone was bathing by the boathouse. Someone she knew.

In the shadow of the wooden planks, Robbie Turner splashed about and hummed a folk song under his breath, his pale complexion stark against the dark of the water. How had Cecilia not seen him earlier? He was a sitting duck there, all out in the open, and she had almost served herself on a silver platter to the one person she wanted to talk to least!

Quietly, she let her breath slip from between her lips and hunkered down in the water until only her eyes and forehead rose above the lapping waves. Now, among the roots and dipping stems of the flowers growing at the pond’s edge, she had to be almost invisible to the unsuspecting eye.

And unsuspecting Robbie Turner certainly was. He kept singing quietly to himself, his voice coarse and sonorous as he slicked back his wet hair and rubbed between his toes. His biceps flexed with the movement, and Cecilia felt herself blush.

Why was she still standing there and watching, anyway? She didn’t recognise herself lately – always so on edge whenever she walked by Robbie as he was tending to the garden, their gazes crossing hotly. Never willing to talk to him, an odd sort of reluctance making bitter bile rise in the back of her throat if even the slightest whisper of a memory of their shared childhood brushed past her.

For a reason she could not possibly wish to fathom, it felt like he had her pinned under his thumb – like he had raised a claim she was not sure she could fulfil.

And now, she was watching on like some filthy peeping tom as he leaned back in the cool embrace of the water, raised his gaze to the sky which mirrored the colour of his eyes and smiled at nothing at all. Always so happy. Always so carefree, even those few times she had passed him by on the streets of Cambridge and he had been joking with his fellow students while Cecilia’s girl friends had whispered to each other, devouring him with their eyes.

Even now, weeks after they had both finished their studies and left Cambridge’s picturesque streets and lousy students’ housings behind, Cecilia felt a strange burning sensation at the mere thought of Robbie with other women. Was it protectiveness? Was it – and oh, it couldn’t possibly be – was it – jealousy?

Cecilia huffed and watched the bubbles pop on the water surface in front of her nose. Then, her gaze returned to where Robbie had straightened up and was wading back to the shore.

Her brows creased in a frown. A swathe of bandages was tightly wound around Robbie’s chest, cutting into the flesh of his back and leaving angry red marks. And Cecilia wondered – had he injured himself while working in the garden? But then why were the bandages so tight? Didn’t they hurt?

What were they hiding?

Her train of thoughts was derailed spectacularly when Robbie bent over, half-way out of the water and clothed only in his cotton drawers which clung to his backside like a second skin and left nothing – nothing at all – to the imagination. He had seen something in the water, was dunking his hand under and then out again.

“There you go,” she heard him mutter, the smile still tainting his voice all shades of lovely. Suddenly, Cecilia felt hot all over again, despite the chill of the water she sat submerged in.

A bee. Robbie Turner had seen a drowning bee, or wasp, or whatever insect it was that was buzzing away on the palm of his hand now, and had decided to save it. Because he was Robbie Turner, kind, sweet, gentle Robbie Turner. Because that was just what Robbie Turner would do.

“Now, I need to get out, and you need to get off.” Perched half-way up the pond bank, Robbie gently blew onto his hand, watching in fascination as the insect droned and shook its wings dry before it took off for the nearest flower.

“Good boy,” he muttered, his words almost lost to Cecilia among the splashing of the water when he pulled himself up and onto dry land. There, he sat for an instant, smiling into nowhere. In ever-changing shapes, the sunlight dappled across his milk-and-cream skin, flitted playfully over his bare shoulders and legs and the odd bandages around his chest.

Cecilia’s heart hammered in her throat. Now at the latest she should have turned away. Should have taken a deep breath and dived out of there, back into the sunny part of the pool where her swimming cap lay lonely and abandoned on the wooden walkway and where there were no Robbie and no jealousy and no strange, murky emotions.

But she watched on – watched as Robbie got up and straightened in the lukewarm breeze, cracked a yawn and squinted into the sunlight. He still hadn’t seen her, and then he was turning away and sauntering over to where she could spy a heap of dry clothes thrown carelessly onto the grass.

Before she could question her actions, she had taken a deep breath and was diving over into the shielding shadow of the boathouse, careful not to make a noise when she came up.

Suddenly, she was so much nearer to him. Nearer to the curve of his backside, the pleasing pallor of his calves, the graceful slope of his hips. She had a front-row seat, and the realisation had her both faint with giddiness and flushing with shame.

And then, Robbie turned around and made to pull down his pants – the last layer separating her from a full front view onto his crown jewels – and Cecilia lost her mind.

She did not know what made her do it. She could just have sat silently and closed her eyes, or watched and said nothing, unheard, unseen. But no. Instead, she shot forth from the water, climbed the banking in a rush and cried with a cracking voice, “Robbie, roll me one of your Bolshevik cigarettes?” all in a desperate attempt to stop him before it was too late.

And yet she was not near fast enough. By the time Robbie had pulled his knickers back up – so quickly Cecilia was worried he had torn something – gasping as he blushed furiously, she had already seen more than she probably should have. The dark triangle of pubic hair between his legs. And her head was spinning with the lack of something she knew should be there, shouldn’t be missing in his anatomy.

The grass and pebbles beneath her bare feet were coarse, but it didn’t register with her.

“Robbie, you don’t have a-”

“Please don’t say it,” Robbie pleaded, his flush draining from his cheeks in a split-second.

“-you don’t have a penis,” Cecilia finished, the words clunky on her tongue, her mind reeling still.

“You didn’t have to say it, Cee,” Robbie whispered, cheeks so pale and lips so red as his voice broke and he wrapped his arms around himself, fingers digging into his flesh.

Cecilia’s breath stuttered in her throat. Oh no. Oh no. She was ruining this. Ruining _him_.

“I- I’m sorry.” And now she was blushing furiously, too, the heat of a thousand suns firing up her cheeks. “I know I shouldn’t have watched, I don’t know what made me do it- why I didn’t look away- I just thought you’d have done the same if it was me, the other way around-”

“No.” Robbie shook his head, his voice eerily steady as he gazed hard and cold at her, despite the tears of anguish he was blinking back. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Robbie-”

“Don’t touch me!” he shouted, eyes blazing like those of a cornered animal as he backed away from her outstretched hand, crying now, “Don’t- Don’t you touch me! Don’t even come near me!”

Despite herself, Cecilia recoiled at the venom in his gaze, the bare-boned anger, the fear. And she knew she couldn’t even come close to understanding, no matter how hard she tried. This secret he was guarding – it was bigger than anything she had ever hushed up, bigger than her petty white lies and her little inconsequential love poems and diary entries from back when she was but a foolish young girl. This secret could land him in the psychiatric asylum if he was not careful.

And now she had found out. She of all people, his childhood friend, his most loyal playmate for the longest time.

She couldn’t even imagine the terror he must feel.

“Robbie,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” he sniffled, not even trying to wipe away the tears streaming down his face as he scowled at her, backed against the thicket behind him with no way out.

She took a step forward. He took one backwards, hand outstretched as though to ward her off, and yet he stayed, didn’t even attempt to run, like he was too weary for flight.

“Please don’t,” he begged quietly, but by then she was already pushing forward, walking up to him and invading his personal space like in a dream haze.

Her arms came up to draw him into an embrace – and though his body spoke the language of rejection, all hard corners and rigid lines, he let her hold him, sobbing silently against her shoulder as he melted into her touch and she rubbed his back, his arms, the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his wet auburn locks sticking to his scalp, “I’m sorry,” and as a full-body shudder wracked him from head to toe, he grasped at her upper arms and cried.

Cecilia let him. She felt his tear drip onto her collarbones, mixing with the water droplets from the pond, and held on tight until the worst was over. Until he heave and sink of his chest had calmed and his stuttering breaths sent goosebumps springing up on her arms.

“Will you- will you tell?” Robbie’s voice came, small and serious.

Cecilia shook her head. And when that wouldn’t reassure him and he drew back, worrying his lower lip between his teeth in obvious distress, she caught his hand in hers and shook her head fervently.

“No. No, I won’t tell, I promise.”

He met hazel gaze with his oh-so blue eyes. “Good.”

And then it was over. Wordlessly, Robbie drew his hand from Cecilia’s and turned away to gather up his dry clothes.

Cecilia watched him, her thoughts staggering. This couldn’t be it. It couldn’t. If they didn’t talk now, they’d never exchange a word again. Before, it had been her who’d pushed him away, avoided him wherever she could, and she hadn’t even had any motivation besides a handful of flimsy emotions. His reason – so much more important, so much graver – would separate them forever, she knew.

“Robbie,” she heard herself say, and he stopped, but didn’t turn back to look at her. “Could I have that cigarette now?”

His shoulders started trembling in incredulous, teary-eyed laughter, and then – at last, at last – he was coming back to her, his steps measured and unsure on the slippery grass. She met his gaze, something twisted and gnarled in her chest unfurling at the relief in his clear eyes. He had always been unable to refuse her.

“It’s my last one,” he cautioned her as he drew a small cotton bag from a pocket of his canvas trousers.

With stiff fingers, she took the cigarette and slid it between her lips, then bent so he could light it for her. The bitter smoke scratched her palate.

“Thank you,” she breathed, eyeing the grey plumes curl sluggishly into the sticky summer air.

“You’re welcome.”

As she smoked, she watched him from under her eyelashes. The wet bandages around his chest were straining.

“Why don’t we sit down,” she offered more than asked.

And so they ended up huddled between the stems of the thicket of man-high yarrows growing by the pond, hidden from the eyes of anyone who walked by without looking closely. The leaves tickled Cecilia’s sides, and the nape of her neck itched with the knowledge that any wasp could take a stab at her if it felt like it, but she was just glad they were sitting there. Maybe not talking, but in companionable silence as they watched bees and butterflies flit from flower to flower.

The sweet scent of the yarrows and lilies all around, together with the heady smell of the sun-heated soil, brought back memories. Cecilia remembered. Back in elementary school, when the summers had seemed so much longer, they would have spent entire days ploughing through the high grass. They would trample it down in circles and then connect them with corridors, designating it their new home. In the evening, they would return home – Cecilia into the grand house, Robbie to his mother who waited down by the gate – all tired from playing house in the baking sun, with grass stains over their trousers and insect bites on their knees.

She frowned. Even back then, Robbie had been… had looked like a boy. Had been a boy.

One time, years ago, he had climbed an apple tree in the fruit grove to save a kitten. Back on the ground, Cecilia had seen blood running down his leg, staining the cotton of his trousers crimson. She hadn’t thought anything of it then, believing him when he had told her that is was just a gash from a twig.

Beside her, Robbie coughed, scratching the back of his head. She looked up.

“So,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “You want to know more.”

She hummed. It was neither a yes nor a no – she wouldn’t push him if he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Mother always knew. I think she knew before I did.” He sniffed, sat up a little straighter. The hairs on his legs shimmered golden – he had only pulled his blue shirt back on to cover the bandages around his chest. “The nursery was the last time I wore long hair, and I hated being called a girl, treated like a girl. Mother took me to a doctor, a friend, who helped forge the F into an M on my documents, and from then on, I was allowed to act like a boy, dress like a boy – be a boy. All through elementary school, grammar school…”

Cecilia watched a smile bloom on his lips. “So that’s why you said you were dispensed from physical exercise.”

“Yes.” He glanced over at her, flushing with the sudden realisation of how close they actually were. Their shoulders were almost touching. “And somehow I always slipped by in the communal showers in college.”

She nodded. He took it as an invitation to continue.

“I never- Me and my lady friends, we never got close enough to, you know. And you, obviously, well, it was like you never considered it an option, still don’t do…”

Cecilia let him talk and just watched, sometimes humming in sympathy until his words had faded into a comfortable background drone. Watched as he smiled and spoke, gestured wildly, plucked a dandelion off the ground and began dissecting its stem, smearing the white plant milk all over his fingers and knees.

The glowing cigarette between her fingers she had long since forgotten about.

He caught her off-guard when he looked down at her hand and exclaimed, “Oh, you’re not even smoking it!” He reached for the fag. “Come on, give it here.”

But she pulled back, brought it to her lips and took a deep drag. Robbie frowned, and she smiled at his confusion.

He had never made any claim on her. It had always been she who had put all that pressure, all that anger onto herself, and all just because she couldn’t be bothered to find out what it was that she really felt.

It was a hot day. A hot, sticky summer’s day, one of those days that makes you lose your mind, makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.

It was now or never.

She leaned forward, exhaled slowly and watched as the smoke billowed over Robbie’s stupefied face. Then, she closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his.

Robbie’s thoughts were coming asunder.

Cecilia. Cecilia Tallis was kissing him. Kissing him with her red, red lips, her small, perfect lips, hot and searing, tasting of the pond and the summer sun.

She was kissing him, and he was just sitting there, with his eyes open and his heart beating wildly against his ribcage, and then it was over. Cecilia leaned back, a lovely rose blush high up on her cheekbones, and took another drag of the cigarette.

And Robbie couldn’t help staring. He sucked in a pained breath.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Cecilia murmured when it dawned on her that Robbie wouldn’t be saying anything. “Just didn’t know until now that I did.”

There was a lump in his throat – a big, painful lump, and it hurt when Robbie swallowed. He licked his lips, nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Cecilia looked at him for a moment longer, obviously waiting on him to say more. Then, when he wouldn’t, she shrugged and turned away to gaze up at the open sky, openly dismayed.

Robbie exhaled silently, shuddering. Oh, how beautiful her upturned face was, how perfect her profile, the gentle slope of her nose, the delicate curls of her auburn hair. Cecilia Tallis was flawless. Flawless.

And yet he knew that he, Robbie Turner, was… oh-so far from flawless.

“Why now?” he found himself saying before he could stop himself. Cecilia looked back at him, and he sniffed, mortified at the blush which seemed unwilling to drain from his face. “Why now after you’ve seen that- that I’m not-?”

She cocked a perfectly arched eyebrow. “I’m not a lesbo.”

Robbie’s heart plummeted. So she’d never be willing to, well, to get intimate, because he was not… down there. He pushed a noncommittal hum.

“I’d love to suck you off though,” Cecilia followed up, and Robbie choked on his own spit.

“I- _what?_ ”

Cecilia grinned and said nothing. Robbie shook his head, incredulous.

“You do know that I don’t- that that’s not possible?” He gestured suggestively down at his crotch area. “I don’t _have_ anything to, uh, suck off.”

A bee hummed by. Cecilia’s grin remained. Slowly, she tilted her head, and Robbie frowned. He itched to brush her unruly auburn locks back from her brow.

“But I want to make you feel good,” she insisted at last. “Please.”

Robbie opened his mouth to decline- and found that his mind had been wiped blank of words. So, he remained still and said nothing.

Robbie Turner had never been able to refuse Cecilia Tallis anything. And now here she was, swaying towards him, taunting him with her presence, until finally she raised a hand and cupped his cheek.

Despite himself – despite his pride, his foolish pride – he melted into her touch, pushing the softest sigh. And then her mouth was back on his, hotter than before, hungrier than before, and she was bearing him down against the ground with all her weight.

He went willingly. He let her trap him between the yarrow stems and her searing, sticky body, let her plunder his mouth as he raked his hands over her sides, down the back of her thighs, over her lovely bottom, and pulled her so, oh-so close, as close as possible.

One of her hands slipped between them, toyed with the waistband of his drawers, and he groaned into their kiss. Already, he felt himself starting to leak, clenching around nothing as arousal curled up his thighs, through his belly. Cecilia was making those little noises – those little noises he had always imagined in the dark of night, had touched himself to – those little gasps, cut short by the press of their lips against each other.

Then, the hand crawled upwards and started unbuttoning Robbie’s shirt.

He gasped, bucked his hips until Cecilia was drawing back, and caught her fingers in his grip. “Don’t, please don’t.”

She stared at him. He stared back. Her body straddling his waist was heavy, hot, delicate, and he found himself unable to look away from her eyes. Her beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, searing into his, inviting him to lose himself in their dark depths.

By the time she pulled her hand from his grasp, he had already forgotten why he was holding it in the first place.

“Pretend like-” Groaning, she reached behind herself, and then the top part of her white swimming suit sagged down to expose her even whiter chest, her nipples pert and dark against the pale of her flesh. Blind to Robbie’s spluttering, she grabbed a hold of his hands, placed a kiss on the back of first his left, then his right, before she placed his palms atop her breasts. “Pretend like you’ve never touched a girl’s chest before,” she breathed.

Robbie swallowed once, dryly. Oh, they shouldn’t be lying here in the grass together, shouldn’t be doing this. If they were found out, if anyone saw-

He hesitated. Fingers trembling, he flicked his gaze up to meet Cecilia’s.

Eyes sparkling, she laughed. “Oh, come on now!” Her hands came up to press Robbie’s tighter against her chest. “You’re such a perfect actor already - you’ve definitely got the flustered part down, I’ll say.”

Impossibly, he felt his blush deepen, and he was more than glad when Cecilia leaned down and kissed him anew, pushed into his mouth with a fervency that would have scared him if he wasn’t smouldering up from the inside in just the same way. Tentatively, he cupped her breasts tighter, brushing one of her nipples with his thumb.

It was like he had found one of Cecilia’s chords and tugged it. Moaning, she pressed into his touch, gasped into their kiss, gently caught his lower lip between her teeth and nibbled on it. Then, without warning, she drew back and began kissing down his chest, over his belly, his hips, her lips searing even through the cotton of Robbie’s shirt, until she had her fingers hooked into the waistband of his drawers and was pulling them down.

“Cecilia-” Robbie gasped, unintentionally bucking up into her touch.

“Just don’t look.” Carelessly, she threw his underpants aside and lowered herself on her belly between his legs, the look of utter concentration on her gorgeous face drawing a whimper out of him. “Such a gorgeous cock. Just lean back, don’t look.”

And Robbie did as he was told. He lay down on the damp soil, threw one of his lower arms over his eyes and keened as Cecilia brushed her fingers over his pubic hair, parted the wet folds of his cunt and breathed hot air against his clit.

“Ungh, Cee-” Lust like he had never felt it before coursed through his body, and then Cecilia’s tongue was on him, hot and wet and unyielding as she sucked his clit between her lips and hummed.

Robbie’s head was spinning – maybe it was the heat, maybe the fact that _Cecilia Tallis was sucking him off_ – and he whimpered, grasping for something, anything to hold on to. Cecilia’s hand gripped his thigh in an attempt to still his trembling, and then she was hushing him, whispering, “I love your prick, your gorgeous, gorgeous prick, just feel how much I love it, love you, love you.”

Robbie lost himself in Cecilia’s lips on his cunt, her tongue on his clit, and the wetness seeping into the sleeve of his shirt over his eyes meant nothing to him. His heart was straining against the bandages which pressed down on the bosom he had never wanted and had grown nonetheless, and all around him, insects hummed and water lapped as he sobbed and reached down and laced his fingers with Cecilia’s as she kissed him in his most intimate places - and then he was clenching around nothing and shaking apart at the seams and coming with a choked-off shout-

Tears streaking down his cheeks. Cecilia’s hand in his own, squeezing tightly.

Robbie drew in a shuddery breath and blinked up into the blue of the summer sky, suddenly all weary and boneless. “ _Oh_.”

“Oh indeed.” Cecilia, smiling that brilliant smile of hers, picked herself up and lay down on his chest, her hands with the bright-red painted fingernails resting atop his sternum. Her lips were slick, and redder than ever.

“I think I love you,” Robbie whispered, heart palpitating. “I love you, Cecilia. I love you.”

“I love you, Robbie,” Cecilia replied, tears of unbridled joy welling up in her eyes as though saying it was what made it really come true, “I love you,” and then she was leaning down and kissing him, and though he could taste himself on her lips, it was all he had ever needed, had ever wanted, had ever wished for.

Things didn’t go back to how they were. They never would – both Robbie and Cecilia knew this. And that was not at all bad.

For the dinner given in honour of Leon and his friend, Robbie combed his hair and wore his finest suit. Cecilia met him by the servants’ door, in the most exquisite dress Robbie had ever seen on her – had ever seen on any woman, and he was sure no one else could wear it as well as Cecilia did – and in the shadow of the archway, away from prying eyes and nosy little sisters, they exchanged kisses and whispered vows until it was time to go inside and join the others.

None of the women at the table equalled Cecilia’s beauty. More than once, Robbie found himself glancing over at her, and every time she would meet his gaze and smile, smile just for him. The first course had barely been served when their hands found each other under the table and held on, fast and firm.

Then, Bryony returned from the Quincey twins’ room, upset to no end as she proclaimed that they had run away, and the whole party was promptly handed torches to be transformed into a search operation.

When no one was looking, Robbie and Cecilia exchanged a look.

Five minutes later found them down by the riverbank between the yarrows, in the spot which they had made their own. And only the stars and the moon watched them as they kissed, a whole shared lifetime before them, as Robbie shucked Cecilia out of that flimsy excuse of a dress and put his lips to her perfect, perfect marble breasts – as Cecilia, with the clarity of passion, spread Robbie’s legs, leaned forward and kissed his sweet, wet cunt.

**Author's Note:**

> This is how it could go:  
> The two figures by the fountain were never there. From the very beginning, Bryony rightly accuses Paul Marshall of raping Lola Quincey, and Robbie goes on to med school, studying to become a doctor. His and Cecilia’s affair is found out eventually, and Cecilia breaks with her family in favour of following Robbie into a new life as a nurse. Since Great Britain needs all the medics it can get, Robbie isn’t drafted into the army, but remains with Cecilia in England.  
> They get married shortly after the Allied Victory, in a London that’s devastated by war. Though rattled by the atrocities they have seen, they are well and alive and go on to adopt a bunch of war orphans.  
> The summers with their little family are spent down by the coast, in a cottage by the beach. It’s white clapboard with blue painted window frames. 
> 
> Kudos and especially comments will be met with love!


End file.
